Treachery at Lancaster Gate

March 1, 2016
The latest in Perry's long-running Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series (this is the thirty-first entry) runs true to Perry's formula: showcase a crime that reveals the immense social inequities and tensions of late-Victorian England. Charlotte and Thomas themselves embody the social spectrum: police inspector Thomas came from humble origins, while Charlotte is a Lady. Charlotte's aristocratic roots enable the couple to infiltrate the drawing rooms and ballrooms of the upper crust (the barb-filled dialogue Perry creates between Charlotte and other women is either over the top or delightful, depending on the reader). In the latest, Thomas, now head of the Special Branch of Security, is called to the scene of a London bombing that has killed two policemen and gravely injured three more. Pitt discovers that the police themselves were the targets. Anarchists are first blamed, but suspects come to include an MP and an aristocrat addicted to opium. Perry sometimes seems to graft our own time's fear of terrorism onto the Victorian sensibility here. It remains an entertaining read, but some Perry fans may start to feel like they've heard all this before.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2015

A bomb goes off in London during a secret police raid, claiming several lives, and Commander Thomas Pitt soon learns that it was not an anarchist attack but a calculated cover-up of murder. British author Perry will speak this month at the inaugural Fort Worth Library Author Series.

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